Seventy-five years ago, Bugs Bunny made his official debut in A Wild Hare, as a wise-cracking, smart-aleck rabbit not afraid of his aggresor, Elmer Fudd.

Since 1939, when he was an anonymous minor character, Bugs has appeared in more than 175 films and become Warner Bros most famous creation, the second animated character to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (Mickey Mouse got the first).

Bugs was created by a team of animators and artists working with Tex Avery, one of the cartoonists behind Hollywood's Golden Age of Animation. Warner Bros had introduced a few cartoon rabbits , but none had the spirit or spark of Bugs, whose Brooklyn accent and ballsy attitude made him an instant hit.

Before A Wild Hare, the bunny in question had been a replacement for Daffy Duck, or rather "Daffy Duck in a rabbit suit."

The more fully realised Bugs held audiences captive from his first line: "What's up, Doc?" As Avery recalled: "It floored 'em! ...Here's a guy with a gun in his face! ...They expected the rabbit to scream, or anything but make a casual remark... It got such a laugh that we said, 'Let's use that every chance we get.'

"It became a series of 'What's up, Docs?' That set his entire character, he was always in command, in the face of all types of dangers."

Over the next eight decades Bugs would tackle the zeitgeist in his own, signature way, from War propaganda to basketball player, in the 1996 blockbuster Space Jam, opposite Michael Jordan. Here are six little-known facts about him:

1. He was the first TV drag queen

As YouTube channel Girlfriends TV argues, Bugs Bunny was remarkably gender-fluid, changing into women’s clothing at the drop of a (fancy) hat and adopting feminine traits, only to drop his disguise and continue as a rabbit, and a male one at that, without incurring any mockery or mirth. Check out Mississippi Hare, where Bugs, as a southern belle, seduces a stranger to escape from Colonel Shuffle.

2. He was embroiled in a race row

In 1944, Bugs starred in Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips, an American WWII-propaganda film which swiftly dated due to its racist portrayals of Japanese soldiers. It was created shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, and screened occasionally on TV until 1948, but didn’t emerge in public until the release of The Golden Age of Looney Tunes on VHS, just in time for Christmas 1991.

Few people considered it “Golden” - the videos were withdrawn and Japanese rights groups protested the animation’s distribution. When The Golden Age of Looney Tunes was re-issued, Nips the Nips was replaced with Racketeer Rabbit.

3. He rescued his voiceover artist from a coma

Most people can do a rather ropey Mel Blanc impression – they probably just don’t realise it. Whether it’s Tweety-Pie’s “Okay, Puddycat!”, “You’re disssspicable”, as uttered by Daffy Duck or the nasal, Brooklyn tones of Bugs, Blanc lent his elastic vocal chords to masses of Looney Tunes characters - 1,500 characters during his entire career.

In 1961, Blanc, then 53, ended up in a coma after a car crash. He was completely unresponsive, until two weeks later a surgeon addressed him: “Bugs! Bugs Bunny! How are you doing today?, to which he replied: “Eeee, what’s up, Doc?”

The surgeon went on to ask if Porky was there, Daffy, Tweety, Sylvester and more, to which Blanc replied in character, before waking up as himself.

Blanc’s son Steve, who can also do several of the Looney Tunes character voices, shocked the animation community in 2007 by revealing that Bugs Bunny had a long and unrequited love with his archenemy Elmer Fudd.

The younger Blanc is the author of Bugs and Elmer: A Forbidden Love, and explained his theory at the Academy of Motion Pictures annual Warner Brothers Looney Tunes Night. The news was met with supportive surprise.

Blanc said that the relationship was expressed in code: “The studio just wouldn’t allow it. Instead, Bugs and Elmer expressed their love for each using homosexual codes of the day, such as Elmer pointing a gun at Bugs, and Bugs responding with a squirt of seltzer in his face.

“Those in the closeted gay community clearly knew that Bugs famous “What’s Up, Doc?” was the password to get entry into the notorious Hammer Club on the Sunset Strip.”

5. He was almost called Happy Rabbit

According to Blanc, at least, who suggested they should name the character after one of his creators, the director Ben ‘Bugs’ Hardaway, instead. Hardaway was the likely namesake of the rabbit, but other sources think that he became so after the director asked Charles Thornson designed the character, and sent it back to him labelled “Bugs’ Bunny”. Chuck Jones, who famously directed a number of Looney Tunes films, said: “Had [the drawing] been for me, it would have been Chuck’s Bunny.”

6. There's a Bugs Bunny nude scene

Bugs Bunny gets a U certificate whether he's clothed or naked, because he's a rabbit, right? Right. Except, in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in The Wabbit Who Came To Supper, a 1942 short about Elmer and Bugs antagonising each other for the sake of inheritance, there's more of Bugs than we're used to seeing on show.

At around 2.50 in the video, something appears over the top of Bugs' towel as he comes out of the shower. It's not entirely clear if his Angel in Disguise ditty is connected, or not.